Human are complex organisms that made up of million individual systems. Professor Kim Chow of School of Life Sciences is one of the dedicating scientists working on dissecting the mechanisms regulating human physiology. Instead of following conventional approaches, she decodes the signalling pathways in neurodegenerative diseases by combining big data analysis to small things like molecular biology.

With the interdisciplinary approach, she is able to analyse massive amount of molecular data within a short period of time, and the efficient research method and data-driven results facilitate her to determine the most feasible regulatory mechanism. Her endeavours and perseverance are not wasted; recently, she has been awarded the Excellent Young Scientists Fund 2020 from the National Natural Science Foundation of China. In the brand-new interview series “Our Eminent Scientists @ CUHK”, she will share with us how she paved the way for neuroscience research.

Full articles in Chinese and English available on Faculty Website.

Interview Video on YouTube

While students were planning for the new semesters this summer, the Faculty also organised consultation sessions to help students in making informed choices. The consultation was hosted by Science Student Academic Advisors (SSAAs), a group of science students who are determined to help their peers to reach their academic goals and enrich their learning experience.

This year, the Information Day has employed a digital alternative. The Faculty and programmes had also turned their booths into virtual ones with a wide array of live admission talks and chat sessions staged online.

The observation and record of supernova events had long been carried out centuries ago, though it was later revealed that supernovae are in fact the violent explosions of massive stars, the reason why they explode and what powers such explosions have remained a puzzle to astrophysicists after several decades of intensive study.

The largest earthquake ever recorded lasted for only about ten minutes. But two decades ago, scientists discovered that faults, the surfaces where earthquakes occur, can slide past each other very slowly sometimes. The slow earthquake, occurs deep in the earth and releases energy at slow pace, can last for weeks or longer. Professor Tan Yen Joe of Earth System Science Programme recently analysed hundreds of thousands of weak tremors emanating from the San Andreas Fault in California and found that slow earthquakes behave similarly to regular earthquakes.

Professor Amos Tai of Earth System Science Programme has a broad research interest in atmospheric chemistry and physics, air pollution, ecosystem services and food security under climate change. To solve the complex problems in environment, he makes use of high-performance computing and bridges physical sciences with life sciences from an earth system perspective.

Professor Martin Li of Department of Mathematics and Professor Kim Chow of School of Life Sciences have recently been awarded Excellent Young Science Fund 2020 by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), an organisation managed by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST).

Professor He Xuhua of Department of Mathematics has just received the XPLORER PRIZE (Mathematics and Physics) in recognition of his spirit of scientific exploration and potential for innovation.

Professor Liu Lin of Earth System Science Programme is one of the finalists in the Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year. He uses artificial intelligence to monitor drastic changes in Earth’s polar regions. With the help of AI-based methods, researchers no longer have to manually check every single glacier image because satellite observation will provide pivotal measurements of the rapid changes in vast remote and cold regions.

"In the US, people don’t leave the country. They may leave the state, but they never have the sense of what it’s like in another place," said Brad Heater, the American who chose to study his doctorate degree in Hong Kong seven years ago.

88th Congregation for the Conferment of Master’s Degrees
Date: 20 November, 2020 (Friday)
Time: 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.